Wmd Myth Meant To Deter Iran First Cia

First, the CIA comes out and says it can’t find any convincing evidence that Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi’s presence at certain points in Iraq has long been argued as a proof of his links to terrorism and al-Qaeda (even though Zarqawi’s Monotheism and Jihad is a bitter rival of al-Qaeda rather than part of it). It was always argued by the Right in the US that Iraq was a tightly controlled totalitarian state and that Zarqawi couldn’t have slipped in and out unnoticed. But this was always a silly argument. Saddam’s state was ramshackle, and Badr Corps fighters slipped in an out of Iraq all the time (they are supposedly on our side; has the administration bothered to debrief them?) The Zarqawi story was so important as a casus belli that the Bush administration even deliberately avoided attacking the small Ansar al-Islam base in northern Iraq when it had the chance before the war.

Well, of course, he did announce the fact, in the materials submitted to the UN in fall of 2002. But the paperwork did not explain how exactly all the chemical weapons were destroyed, and actually fueled the Bush administration attack rather than forestalling it.

The Guardian reports an Iraq Survey Group Report that is based in part on interviews with Saddam after he was captured. They reveal that Saddam feared using chemical weapons against Coalition troops in 1990-1991 because he was convinced that this move would cost him the support of all his backers. He said, “Do you think we are mad? What would the world have thought about us? We would have completely discredited those who had supported us.”

Of course, he may have been lying about his motives. The US had threatened him with regime change if he used those weapons, whereas he knew he might well survive if his forces were just tossed out of Kuwait. Also, he had to be at least a little afraid of US retaliation, and it actually does have nuclear and biological weapons.

The main reason for which he would not provide proof of the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles, he told the group, was that he was worried about Iran. Apparently he never got over the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, when he came close to being defeated by his much bigger neighbor. (Only the Reagan Adminsitration alliance of convenience with him saved him). And, of course, his anxiety about Iran was in part a code for fear of a Shiite uprising.

Saddam was fighting several Shiite revolutions, being mounted by the Sadrists, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the al-Da`wa Party, and the Marsh Arab Hizbullah. He was barely able to keep a lid on them, using secret police and brutal repression. They were being backed by Iran (or at least all but the Sadrists were), and he was admitting that he feared that if the Iranians and the Iraqi Shiites thought he would not be able to gas them, he might be open to another invasion or a popular Shiite uprising. The group report says Saddam used chemical weapons on the Shiites to put down the rebellion of spring, 1991. (What it does not say is that the United States, which was in a position to stop this use of WMD on civilians, as well as the use of conventional weapons to massacre thousands, declined to so much as fire a missile at a helicopter gunship).

Ironically, the Sadrists and Marsh Arabs have gone on to pose a dire threat to order in post-Saddam Iraq, and the US has also treated them harshly as a result.

Saddam also was appears to have been convinced that the US would not attack his regime after September 11, because of its secular character. Saddam is often caricatured as a madman (and it is true that there is something wrong with the man), but in this remark he shows himself thinking rationally and expecing Bush to do the same.